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A 95-year-old Chinese war veteran recently discovered he had been living
for almost eight decades with a bullet lodged in his neck.
After suffering a fall from the balcony of his house in Shandong, China,
Zhao He didn’t report any symptoms to his worried family. He didn’t feel
any pain, but after a while, the World War 2 veteran did start to feel a
slight discomfort in his neck, so his son decided to take him to the
hospital for a checkup. After hearing about his fall, doctors
recommended an X-ray, to ensure that he hadn’t suffered serious damage
to his neck. Only instead of a fracture, the X-ray revealed a foreign
object in the man’s neck, which would later be identified as an old
bullet.
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The 95-year-old man told doctors that he had joined the Chinese army as
a teenager and fought through two wars – against the Japanese invaders
during World War 2 (1931-1945) and on the side of North Korea during the
Korean War (1950-1953). He suffered multiple injuries during his time in
the army, but he did not remember anything about taking a bullet to the
neck.
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“He was injured while carrying a wounded comrade across a river during
one of the battles. There is shrapnel in other parts of his body as
well,” the man’s son-in-law, Wang, said.
Zhao himself estimates that the bullet had been in his neck since 1944,
when he was hit by a bullet while crossing a river. The bullet allegedly
went in through the left side of the nose, perforating his upper jaw and
knocking out for of his teeth before becoming lodged in his neck. This
is just his hunch, though.
After examining the X-rays, doctors told Zhao He and his family that the
bullet was close to some major blood vessels and that since it hadn’t
caused him any problems, it was best to leave it in. The war veteran
agreed.
“I’ve been healthy all these years so there is no reason to change
things now,” Zhao he said. |